Queries
by phoenix1800
Summary: Oneshot. Hunter's just full of strange questions today. Cam indulges him. HunterCam slash, nonexplicit.


I don't own PRNS or any of the characters. If I did, Hunter/Cam would be canon.

Takes place a few months after the season ends, before the Dino Thunder team-up. Hunter's just full of strange questions today. Cam indulges him.

Queries

"Can I ask you a question?" Hunter asked Cam abruptly, as the samurai shuffled around his suite, getting ready to leave.

"You just did, but yeah," answered Cam, as he continued to pack his things. Laptop, lesson plans…where had he put his keys? He turned around to look for them, frowning.

"Who created the zords?" asked Hunter. Cam turned around to face him and arched an eyebrow.

"I did," he replied, like it should've been obvious. And yeah, it kinda was, but still. Hunter was curious.

"When did you start creating them?" asked Hunter, spotting Cam's keys on the counter—where they usually were—and passing them to him.

"I was fifteen," answered Cam indifferently, like it was no big deal that while most kids had been worrying about their next algebra test he had been creating major weaponry.

Hunter paused at his answer to contain an affectionate smile. That was so Cam. "But then why didn't you know that our zords," meaning his and Blake's, "Fit together with the Wind's zords for the Thunderstorm Megazord?" he asked.

Cam paused in his packing, which meant this story required his attention. "I didn't really know where to start when I began working on the zords," he told Hunter. "I knew we would need them, just like I knew we would need the morphers. I had already created a set for the Winds with my father's help and when Sensei Omino came to us requesting a pair for the Thunder Academy, we created those too."

"Wait, you know Sensei Omino?" demanded Hunter. He hadn't known that…

"Didn't you see me talking to him at the graduation ceremony?" Cam asked him skeptically. "Of course I do. I've been visiting the Thunder Academy ever since I was little. I didn't assemble the Thunder zords and then drive them over to your school myself, you know."

"Point," conceded Hunter. That really had been a pretty stupid question. Now he had more questions that he wanted answers to, but it could wait until this story was finished.

He motioned for Cam to continue. "So I was stuck on the zords. Then Sensei Morimoto—do you recognize the name?" Cam asked him.

"Of course," replied Hunter, nodding. Sensei Morimoto had been the first ninja to graduate from both academies—the only one, thus far. Even he and Blake had taken their honors from just the Wind Academy.

"Sensei Morimoto suggested a spirit quest," Cam told him. "That's what I did. A meditative trance for three days. When I came out of it, the plans were sketched out and I had a framework to go on. I don't even remember how it happened, to be honest. I always thought Sensei Morimoto knew more than he was telling, but I was too busy to question it. It took me three years to finish the zords and I just…never noticed the matching parts. I had no reason to—I was working on the zords at separate sites anyways. I was more concerned with matching the Insectizord with the Beetlezord, and the same with the Wind zords."

Hunter considered this. "Okay," he said, accepting it. Because really, how strange were ninja spirit quests in light of everything else they had been through?

"What about the Mammoth Zord and your chopper?" he asked, the thought just occurring to him. He hadn't questioned their appearance at the time, but now that he thought about it, hadn't they just…well, been there?

"That I have no clue on," Cam told him, shrugging. "I'm guessing mystical powers or something of the like. I mean, the scroll that held the information about the Riff Blaster and the Mammoth Zord was ancient. Maybe their appearance was based on the zords we already had. There's really no way to know. And the chopper just appeared when I emerged back into this time—it was waiting for me just outside the portal. Perhaps it was a consequence of the altered time stream—which brings into light a million other questions about my trip, ones that I'd waste my whole life wondering over because really, I don't think they have an answer."

Cam had changed, decided Hunter as he picked up one of his boyfriend's bags, if only in the way that he was able to let some things slide, let some questions go unanswered like that. It was good for him. If he had to have an answer for everything he would've driven both himself and Hunter crazy by now.

"So you visited the Thunder Academy before you and I started dating?" Hunter asked, as he and Cam headed out onto the campus of the Wind Academy. No one gave them strange glances—they were used to seeing the two of them together.

Cam nodded. "Not so much when I was younger, but once I started working on the ranger stuff I was over quite a bit," he replied, as they headed toward the waterfall portal.

"It's weird that we never met before, then," murmured Hunter. He and Blake had lived on-campus and had trained there ever since their parents died.

"Not so much," Cam told him, pausing to walk through the portal. Once Hunter had followed him he elaborated, "I usually went straight to the zord sites or to Sensei Omino's office. I wasn't on the main campus much. I didn't even know that you and Blake were in line to receive the morphers I made. It never occurred to me to ask."

"From one project straight to the next, right?" Hunter asked wryly. Once something was done, in Cam's mind, it only meant that the next task could be tackled.

Cam shrugged. "The morphers were done and I trusted Sensei Omino's judgment," he replied.

"Yeah, and look who you got stuck with," said Hunter, shooting a vaguely self-deprecating smirk at the samurai.

Cam frowned at him. "If you weren't meant for the powers you wouldn't have ended up with them," he told Hunter, as they walked through the woods. "You were a good ranger, Hunter."

"I know," said Hunter, not being arrogant but truthful, "But maybe if the powers had gone to someone else Lothor wouldn't have been able to use Blake and me like he did. Maybe the powers would have gone to people who could've used them for good from the start."

"Or the powers could have gone to weaker-minded people and they could have been corrupted, and we'd all be dead right now," Cam refuted. "You and Blake used your powers for good once you knew the truth, and that's what matters."

They stopped talking to streak and when Hunter saw Cam again they were a couple hundred yards outside the Thunder Academy. The Thunder Academy was situated on a bed of cliffs hundreds of feet above the ocean. The whole Academy was under a holographic shield, even the cliffs, so it appeared that there was simply nothing there but inaccessible ocean.

"I've always wanted to know," said Cam slowly, watching him, "…Your parents died when you were younger, right? Why didn't you know what happened to them? Why weren't you told?" He obviously hadn't wanted to offend Hunter with his question, but he just as obviously was curious about the answer.

Hunter frowned. "When we were younger and untrained we asked…but no one would ever tell us," he told Cam, sighing. "It's always been a sore spot between us and Sensei Omino, and I don't know if I'll ever completely forgive him for not telling us the truth. All he would say was that they had died on a mission and that the details were classified. As we got older we learned to just accept that…until the Thunder Academy was attacked. Blake and I had been out on a training mission. When we came back, Lothor was waiting for us."

He gave Cam a sideways glance as they walked through the Thunder Academy's portal and onto campus. Cam looked right back at him, calm and unreadable. "He told us that your father was the one who killed our parents. It was easy to believe—why else would the details of our parents' death be confidential? We were angry at everyone, especially at Sensei Omino. We thought he was protecting your father, defending him over our parents. It made us that much more determined to get our revenge. Lothor offered us a way to do that…you know the story from there."

"That explains a lot. It would be a lot easier to believe Lothor's story if you had no story to begin with," murmured Cam. He frowned. "A lot of problems could have been avoided if the Academies," and by 'Academies,' Hunter knew that Cam meant his father and Sensei Omino, "Had been honest about Lothor's existence. If they knew he was alive and active, wouldn't it make sense that he'd come back for revenge? We could have prepared better. We could have prevented his attacks."

"Or we could have forced him to pull something more drastic," Hunter pointed out, using Cam's logic against him. "I mean, think about it. If Lothor had been a little smarter about things he probably could've managed to pull you onto his side too. At the time you and your dad weren't exactly big with the trust." Cam acknowledged that truth with a nod.

Hunter shrugged, keeping his gaze deliberately on the ground ahead of them and the main building coming up ahead of them. "I don't know," he said, sighing, "A lot of things 'could've' happened. What did happen is the important thing, right? And…if any of those things had changed…I dunno, maybe I wouldn't have met the others or you at all. And…if that were the case, I think I like things just the way they are."

Cam tried to suppress his smile, he really did, but he couldn't help it. "Yeah. I think I do too," he replied, as they got to the main building. Hunter grinned at him as they headed up to his suite.

They dropped Cam's stuff off in his room and headed to the training fields. "So how many students am I testing?" asked Cam, adjusting the sash on his teacher's uniform.

Hunter absently reached out and tweaked the familiar green badge over Cam's heart. "Eight," he told Cam. "Three with leanings toward the lightning element, five who are better suited to thunder techniques." The two were actually separate, though a trained ninja master could use both. He was a lightning element that occasionally dabbled in thunder. Blake was his opposite.

Unfortunately, Cam's presence wasn't entirely a social visit. Since their days as rangers had ended, Cam had been included in the data used to pattern ninja students for their element. A surprising number of students had come up as compatible with the samurai training style. Hunter had picked these eight students as the most likely to actually benefit from becoming samurai instead of ninjas. They had been performing well in their element classes, but hadn't been performing as adequately in their ninja classes.

As a second thought, he also adjusted the badge on Cam's shoulder that denoted him as a master of the ice element. He had teased his boyfriend about being an ice affinity in a state that was sunny three hundred and fifty days of the year, but really, he was proud. Ice ninjas—or samurai, in this case—were a rarity to begin with. Cam had only found out when he had become head teacher, after going through the prerequisite screening. He was now, mere months later, already a master of his element. Hunter wasn't surprised. Cam would always be a quick learner.

He had to be, decided Hunter, because Cam didn't have it easy. He was a different training style and a different element in an academy that didn't exactly cater to his needs. The Wind Academy had begun accepting samurai into their programs again, but Cam was pretty much on his own with the ice thing. If these students were, as he suspected, better suited to samurai training, the Thunder Academy would have to find a qualified teacher to being training them. It was something that had never happened at the Thunder Academy before, and it was already causing a buzz around the campus. He knew that the students he had selected had been under intense scrutiny, and even as he walked with Cam he noticed that whole groups of people were stopping to watch them as they went. Yeah, word had definitely gotten around.

Cam looked a little on-edge and Hunter needed a way to diffuse his anxiety. As they got closer to the training fields, another random question popped into his head. "Don't you think it's weird that you were named after yourself?" he asked Cam, deciding to just go ahead and ask. It wasn't like he hadn't asked any other ridiculous questions today. And plus, it was still a valid query. Cam's mom had named him after the young man she had given her samurai amulet to, and that was Cam. It was a difficult concept to wrap your mind around.

Cam blinked, startled. "Hunter," he said slowly, "Is anything about my life in any way normal?" Without waiting for Hunter to answer, he continued with, "I'm a samurai in an academy full of ninjas. This academy is secret, by the way, hidden by holographic portals in the woods. I'm the only ice affinity in a hundred mile radius. I was a power ranger. I'm dating a guy who once tried to kill my father—and said father was guinea pig at the time. The cousins who once tried to kill me are now training at the Academy and my crazy, evil uncle is trapped hundreds of miles underground in an abyss full of evil energy. My mother naming me after myself? Not a huge deal."

Hunter considered this. "But it's weird to think about, right?" he pressed. Cam sighed then, and kissed him just to shut him up. Hunter considered pushing for his answer, but then decided that Cam publicly displaying affection was about as good as the day was going to get, so he went with it. He could always ask again later.

Reviews are welcome and appreciated. This is my first PRNS fic, and I'm excited to see what fellow Hunter/Cam fans think. I also wrote this partly to indulge my own curiosities about some of the things PRNS left open, like the zords and why Cam, a sensei's son, didn't seem to know anything about Hunter or Blake until they attacked as the Thunder Rangers. It also seemed weird to me that Cam never got an element, so there you go. The description of the Thunder Academy is based entirely on the flashes of it we see in "Double Edged Blake."

Thanks for reading; I hope you enjoyed it.


End file.
